Saturday, January 26, 2008

So I just finished reading 52. I was rather unimpressed with how Black Adam's story panned out*. I liked his relationship with Isis and Osiris. It was mellowing him out, bringing him back his humanity. I thought this was a good development for him. Now when they killed off Isis and Osiris, it seemed to be purely for an excuse for Adam to go evil again. *coughWircough*.Now I appreciate they were writing cliches, the commentary said as much, and yes suddenly finding love and even more suddenly losing it does create conflict which is the basis of a good story. But, it's a crying shame that this relationship and Adam's personal growth was confined to the pages of 52. It makes it look like some sort of silly experiment.Black Adam has now reverted to type and the status quo hasn't changed. I think it's lazy. was it all done so that Adam could be depowered? Did the end result drive the story or did the story drive the end reuslt?

And a special shout out to Greg Rucka - don't refer to Isis as an acquisition of Adam's. Don't compare her to a cape. Not cool, Greg, not cool.

*I very rarely read about the Marvels so didn't know Adam had disappeared or murdered a country or two. So this story was a lovely surprise.

Thursday, January 24, 2008

Ok so I'm a little behind the times with this one.Oh Lana, Lana Lana Lana, I realise you're rather mad but shouldn't you know Clark will never go for spying on Lex like that? You've met his morals right? Oh Lana, you're so fucked up in the head. And didn't Lana and Clark have a break up at the end of episode 8? Or some sort of heavy cooling off discussion?

I did like Chloe and Jimmy being discovered in the lift. The looks on their faces. It was just squishy.

Have I missed Chloe experimenting with her powers? Last I saw it was all with the tears of healing, now it's the firey glow of healing? Well I can go with that.

And lastly, yay for Bizarro! Quite excited about next weeks installment now. More excited about Black Canary though. I feel a crush coming on. Pity the set looks so cheap. I'm not sure about the actress's face though. It's a similar feeling with the Kara actress. They just look a bit wrong . Maybe it's just the short hair. We'll see. And with any luck they'll bring Ollie into it, by which point I'll be so excited I may just wet myself.

Sunday, January 13, 2008

So, I've just been away visiting some friends overnight and somehow the talk got onto my feminism. Gee, I can't think how. Possibly because it was me talking.Anyway, my friend is a linguistics professor so we talked about gendered language. I spoke about how I really hated swear words like slut, slag, whore etc. All those sexual ones which really only apply to women. My hatred on these rests on the fact that the use of these words rely on the basic idea that women having sex is bad. It's an attempt to control other women's sexuality. Well you know what? Fuck you. My body, my sex. It's got nothing to do with anyone else. Having sex is not bad. It's not wrong, it's not evil. Not having sex is not virtuous. Not having sex does not make you a better person, or a good girl.

And it is significant that there are no equivalent insults for men. If we want to criticise a man for having sex we call them slut, slag, whore. These become insulting not so much because of the sexual aspect of the word, but because by applying them to men we are feminising men. It's like calling a man a big girl. It implies that being female, being a woman is a bad thing, it is inherently a worse state of being than to be a male. Riiiiighht.My (male) friend agreed with all this. And then said that he believes that we've achieved equality. This makes me so tired.

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Then today on my browsings around the internet I visited The F Word's site. From here I was linked to an Abbey OReilly post on The Guardian's blog site. She talks about being harassed in the street. About being stalked at a London train station. About being groped on the tube. About requests for a blow job from complete strangers. This is violent and threatening behaviour. It happens to all women. It is scary. It is why Reclaim the Night exists. It shouldn't fucking happen. We shouldn't have to put up with this shit. Seems simple right? Apparently not. If you read the comments left on Abbey's post it seems many people cannot tell the difference between chatting someone up and abusing them. This makes me want to weep.

To people who say Feminism isn't needed and we've attained equality, may I direct to Ain't it Cool News. In this article, Capone chats up Loretta Devine. She's not interviewed, she's chatted up. This is not about her work, it's about her sexual status, her availability for a shag. It's like putting a big neon sign saying it's ok, she's still a sexual object, we don't have to take her work seriously, we're thinking about her in terms of sex. This doesn't happen to men. Maybe it's because it's mostly straight men interviewing other straight men. But that highlights another problem doesn't it, where are the lady interviewers?

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One good thing can come out of the Wonder Woman Playboy shoot. Provided they haven't photoshopped and airbrushed her pose, comic artists could use this as an example of how spines work.

Thursday, January 10, 2008

So I've just checked in at feminsting (http://www.feministing.com/) and gone through their recent hillary sexism watch stuff. and now i'm really fucking angry. Iron my shirt? Pinching her cheeks. Ugh. So so angry. Must go seeth. God I hope she wins.